Politics as Usual

Big and small businesses and banks have done well under Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's administration.

The governor has cut various corporate and banking taxes the last four years by more than $1.2 billion under the belief that lower taxes means the companies will have more money to hire more people.

And they are afraid of what a Democratic Tom Wolf administration may cost them.

On Friday, several business leaders — some with past ties to the Republican Party and politics — held a news conference in the Harrisburg area in conjunction with Corbett's re-election campaign to denounce Wolf's plan to change the state's personal income taxes.

Wolf, a wealthy businessman from York, has pledged to raise more money by replacing the state's uniform personal income tax of 3.07 percent with a graduated tax costing some taxpayers more and others less. He also has promised a 5 percent severance tax on natural gas drillers, raising $500 million to $1 billion depending on how much gas is extracted from the Marcellus Shale region.

But Wolf's income tax plan, which he has yet to fully explain, could run into legal trouble under the state constitution, which says "all taxes shall be uniform."

Changing the income tax could require a referendum, and voters have rejected similar ideas in the past.

Wolf's 5 percent severance tax is not a given, either.

But the threat of higher taxes is the threat of higher taxes even after several years of tax cuts.

It is unclear how many jobs — if any — Corbett's business tax cuts have generated since he took office in 2011. Changes in the workforce and unemployment rates coincided with — and may be attributable to — the broader national economic recovery.

In any event, here's the jobs data under Corbett's watch:

The state the state Department of Labor and Industry tracks the job market through the civil labor force, which is a combination of employment and unemployment figures. Employment rates track the number of people holding real jobs; unemployment rates track number of out-of-work people actively searching for work. Those not looking for jobs are not counted.

The state's civil work force decreased by 41,000, less than 1 percent, to about 6.4 million between September 2014 and September 2011, according to L&I's seasonably adjusted data.

In that time, the number of seasonably adjusted jobs in the state has risen by 115,000, or about 2 percent, to nearly 6 million.

In September 2011, the state's unemployment rate was 8.1 percent because 516,000 people in the civil labor force were looking for jobs. In September 2014, the state's unemployment rate was 5.7 percent because 360,000 unemployed people were looking for work.

For weeks, the scandal involving sexually explicit emails being shared among state workers has rocked the state Capitol. It has cost five men their jobs in state government and the private sector and led to the suspension of state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.

On Oct. 2, Harrisburg activist Gene Stilp filed a private criminal complaint with Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marsico in which Stilp requested an "investigation into the misuse of Pennsylvania state government official resources."

On Oct. 16, Francis Chardo, Marsico's first assistant district attorney, wrote back to Stilp, saying, "I will follow up on the request."

But in an email sent Tuesday to The Morning Call, Marsico said no grand jury will be impaneled.

"We construed this as a request for a grand jury," Marsico said. "After preliminary review, there does not appear to be any criminality in the exchange of emails. Accordingly, unless other evidence develops, this matter will not be placed before the investigating grand jury."

Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office found the emails during a review of her predecessors' prosecution of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse case.

Her office showed media emails received by eight former agency employees who held supervisory roles under then-Attorney General Tom Corbett. Corbett and Chief Justice Ron Castille demanded that Kane turn over records to their offices.

Responding to an Associated Press investigation that found that dozens of Nazi war criminals were receiving Social Security benefits, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said last week he'll introduce a bill to close the legal loophole.

The wire service reported that the U.S. Justice Department had allowed Nazi criminals to keep their the Social Security benefits in an effort to help persuade those individuals to leave the country. The Justice Department denied using the benefits as leverage.

"The idea that Nazi war criminals could receive Social Security benefits is deeply disturbing and should be remedied quickly," Casey said in a statement.

Under the proposal outlined by Casey and a fellow Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer of New York, an immigration judge who finds that someone participated in Nazi persecution would issue an order declaring that person ineligible for public benefits.

That order would be sent to government agencies that provide public benefits.

Casey said he and Schumer will formally introduce the bill when Congress returns after the Nov. 4 election.

— Laura Olson

Civility in a political campaign?

Among those vying for a job in the increasingly polarized Congress, civility may yet not be totally dead.

Take the two candidates running in the 17th Congressional District. Democratic Congressman Matt Cartwright and his Republican challenger, David Moylan, faced off in their first of two debates last week in Bethlehem.

The opponents were chatting outside the PBS39 studios shortly before the event, co-sponsored by The Morning Call, got underway.

During the "ask-the-other-guy" portion of the debate, neither was shy about posing critical questions. Moylan grilled the freshman Democrat about a congressional hearing on Benghazi, his abortion stance and his views on gun rights, while Cartwright attempted to pin down the Schuylkill County oncologist on environment issues.

Both men asked and answered the questions cordially, with Cartwright's tone only sharpening ever so slightly when discussing controversy surrounding the Benghazi hearing. That's reflective of the mostly quiet race so far.

Moylan even used part of his closing remarks to — gasp! — say something nice about his opponent, thanking Cartwright for "his contributions over the last two years and for running a positive, issue-oriented campaign."